Comment by et-al
1 year ago
> do you make a utilitarian analysis of the impact of your employer or other products you use?
Actually there are us who would consider what impacts our employers have. E.g. I avoid working for adtech, and sure as hell would not want to work for a company providing government surveillance software.
You’re telling me bad guy labels (bad image for you), not impact. You're personifying on organization.
For example, your job at the ad tech company could be anonymizing data and protecting people’s privacy. Your job at the children’s charity could be scamming old ladies.
> For example, your job at the ad tech company could be anonymizing data and protecting people’s privacy.
This only happens because companies need to adhere to regulations, not because they're doing it out of respect for people.
And by simply not working in adtech, I don't need to go through some mental gymnastics to justify what I spend 40 hours a week building. The beauty of being a programmer is there's a bunch of work out there that doesn't involve crappifying the internet.
> This only happens because companies need to adhere to regulations, not because they're doing it out of respect for people.
Nobody involved in that decision is motivated by respect? You're sounding pretty pessimistic for such a big emphasis on morals.
Go ahead and share what industry you work in then. I guarantee it is not unambiguously good.
6 replies →
On the other hand, if everybody all collectively agreed not to work on adtech, there would be no adtech (or adtech companies). Our decisions don't exist in a vacuum with everyone else's choices being static.
I don’t understand. Would the world be more moral if the ads were only published in newspapers? Or are you expending this to say if I was truly moral I would not participate in the buying and selling of goods?
Computer ads aren’t evil, surveillance, spam, and scams are evil.
1 reply →